Go Kill Crazy!

by Bryan Smith

  Then she snarled with savage glee as she plunged the carving knife deep into Melanie’s abdomen. One of the boys got up to turn up the volume on the music to cover the sounds of the loudest screams yet. The blade went up and down many more times. It made a sickening wet punching sound each time it entered her flesh. After a while consciousness began to ebb and Melanie stopped being aware of how much it hurt. Which was nice. Letting go was nice. Or at least better than incomprehensible suffering. And it was nice to have such hauntingly ethereal music accompanying her into the abyss.

  Sally kept careful count.

  She stabbed Melanie exactly sixty-nine times. She wasn’t sure why, but the number felt right. It was the perfect amount to establish the beautiful cosmic synchronicity instinct told her was necessary. Before the act of flesh transformation via blade was complete, Thomas flipped the record over to the other side.

  Sally had never heard it before, but it seemed like a nice record.

  Later, they wrote on the walls with the blood of their victims.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Meeting the Gang/Trial by Fire

  It was late afternoon by the time Casey followed the old Impala down the little dirt road that led to the rental house Echo owned. She had never spent much time at this place during their time together and this was only the second time he had ever been here. The one other time he had helped her haul away some worthless old furniture abandoned by some renters who’d abruptly packed up and left without proper notice.

  Two other cars were parked on the gravel driveway in front of the house, a sun-bleached 80’s Camaro with Florida plates and Echo’s Lexus. The Camaro had a large outline of a Playboy bunny on the rear window. A sticker on the bumper advertised something called “The Booty Boutique”, which showed a silhouette of a shapely, long-legged woman next to the name. No way that was anything but a strip joint, albeit one with a more colorful name than the norm.

  After parking behind the Impala, he got out of his car, removed his sunglasses and hooked them over the collar of his shirt. He squinted at the house as the Impala’s driver’s side door creaked open and Echo emerged into the slowly fading sunlight. “Wow. I’d almost forgotten what a nice place this is.”

  Echo snorted as she hip-checked the door shut. “It’s a dump, but it’s been our base of operations for a while.”

  There was a wry twist to Casey’s mouth. “Base of operations? What are you, some kind of elite squad of stripper commandos?”

  A fleeting smile touched the corners of Echo’s mouth. “I told you to watch the wiseass bullshit. You need to take that seriously. My friends may not look it, but they are hardcore killers. If they get the feeling you’re disrespecting them at all, you are fucked.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Echo frowned. “I mean it, Casey. Please mind your mouth in there.”

  Casey forced the last remaining traces of levity from his expression, which was harder to manage than it should have been. It wasn’t that he didn’t take her warnings seriously. He knew well enough by now to heed Echo’s words when she was in no-bullshit mode. But something about being on her good side again—even if only tentatively—brought out the smiles and wisecracks. And somehow it didn’t matter that she had been beating him and threatening his life only a few hours ago. Every time he looked into her eyes all he could think about was how badly he had fucked up with her and how lucky he was to have even the remotest chance of winning her back again.

  “I hear you, Echo, I promise. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  “Do better than that. Your life depends on it.” She jerked her head toward the house. “Come on, let’s get on with it.”

  Casey followed her up the steps to the porch, where she unlocked the front door after a quick flip through her keys. Inside there were cobwebs in the corners and the hardwood floor was dusty. Some wooden crates were lined up against a wall adjacent to a hallway. But what really grabbed his attention was the heavy machine gun fastened to a tripod mount. The big gun sat atop a metal cart with rollers in the middle of the living room. Ammunition belts were piled next to it. Its presence in this setting was incongruous and disconcerting. A weapon like that belonged on a desert battlefield somewhere on the other side of the world, not in some unassuming little house in the southern United States. It was another indication Echo and her friends were into some dangerous and shady things.

  Echo noted his dumbfounded expression and shrugged.

  A rickety wooden table was the sole piece of furniture in the kitchen. The beat-up old thing looked like something Echo and her pals had scrounged up from a dump somewhere and maybe they had. Some metal folding chairs were arrayed around the table. There was an enormous pile of cocaine in the middle of the table. As they entered the kitchen, a blonde woman scraped some of the coke away from the pile with the edge of a credit card and started cutting lines. Casey couldn’t help doing a double-take when he saw the blonde. She was so stupidly hot it nearly melted his brain.

  The blonde glanced up at him and smirked. “So this is the infamous Casey? He looks like he wants to fuck me.”

  Echo grunted. “Why should you be different from anyone else?” She snagged a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam from the table and pressed it into Casey’s hands. “Here. Drink up. And stop gawping.”

  Casey didn’t hesitate to take her advice. The way the blonde was watching him made him feel light-headed. He would have to watch himself where she was concerned. He was a strong-willed guy in a lot of ways, but history had proven again and again how that didn’t necessarily apply where gorgeous women were concerned. Falling victim to that weakness again under these circumstances just couldn’t happen.

  A long-legged woman with an abundance of lush, dark hair sat in a chair opposite the blonde. She was gorgeous too, though perhaps just a shade shy of being the kind of earth-shattering bombshell the blonde was. And that was no knock against her. In any other room full of beautiful women, your eyes would go immediately to her and stay there. Like Echo, the blonde and the raven-haired beauty had a distracting number of tattoos. Also like Echo, they evidently both preferred to wear as little as possible.

  Casey’s brain started to melt again.

  He took a few medicinal slugs of whiskey to counteract the effect.

  Echo waved a hand at the blonde. “This is Dez.” She then gestured at the leggy brunette. “And this is Lana.”

  Casey tipped the whiskey bottle at them. “Girls. Good to meet you. So…what’s with the giant gun of doom out there?” He jerked his chin toward the living room. “Expecting a Taliban invasion?”

  Dez shook her head. “That’s privileged information, Casey. Our business ain’t your business, at least not yet. Now sit down and do some fucking cocaine with me.”

  Casey shot a troubled look at Echo. “Look, I appreciate the hospitality, but cocaine just isn’t my thing. Hell, that goes for drugs in general. My sister—”

  Echo nudged him hard with an elbow. “Just shut up and do it.”

  “But—”

  Another, harder nudge. And a look to match. “You’re doing it.”

  Casey pulled out a chair and sat next to Dez. He set the whiskey bottle on the table. “I guess if Echo says I have to do this, I don’t have a choice.”

  Dez reached out and touched one of the tender spots on his face. “Yeah. I can see she put you in your place.” The pad of her thumb lightly rubbed the still-raw gash. “From what I hear, it’s the least you fucking deserved.”

  Casey held his breath.

  He couldn’t help it—her touch made his dick twitch.

  But then her hand came away from his face and she bent her head toward the table to snort up a thick line of powder. Her head popped right back up and she stared into a middle distance with a slack expression for a moment. Then she cackled like a madwoman and leered at Casey. “Your turn.”

  She passed him the clipped straw she’d used to snort the coke.

  And then she put a hand on his knee. Echo made
a sound of annoyance, but she said nothing. Casey’s dick twitched again. In a deliberate effort to negate the physical reaction, he focused his attention on the obscene amount of cocaine in the center of the table. It looked like a small snow drift. He knew an eight-ball of coke went for between two and three hundred dollars locally, depending on source and quality. An eight-ball was just 3.5 grams. So right now he was looking at many thousands of dollars of coke, perhaps tens of thousands. The realization raised a number of troubling questions. Then again, he already knew Echo and her friends were murderers. Drug-trafficking, guns or whatever else they were into sort of paled compared to that.

  Dez squeezed his knee. “Hit that shit.”

  Casey shook his head. “What?”

  Dez shifted in her chair and put her feet in his lap. Echo made a louder sound of irritation, but again said nothing. “What’s with the drooling idiot look? Didn’t know Echo had a thing for retards.”

  Casey glanced down at her feet, which were crossed at the ankles. They were perfectly shaped feminine feet. The nails were painted red. He had a momentary impulse to take a big toe into his mouth and suck on it.

  He looked at her face and swallowed hard. “I, uh…”

  Echo groaned. “For fuck’s sake, Casey, she’s just messing with you. Dez is a lesbian.”

  “I’m maybe ninety-percent dyke, Casey.” Dez laughed. “But the other ten percent of me wouldn’t mind taking you for a test drive.”

  Echo glared at her. “Not cool, Dez. You know he’s mine. Cut the shit.”

  Dez kept her eyes on Casey. “He’s mine if I want him.”

  “No. He isn’t.” Casey could hear the tension in Echo’s voice. She was fighting hard to hold back her anger and not go ballistic. “Take your feet off his lap. Now.”

  Dez looked at her. “Maybe I’ll fight you for him. Who do you think would win?”

  Though her tone was playful, Casey detected a hint of something more malicious under the surface. And if he could discern it, Echo sure as hell wasn’t missing it. This was an interesting and unsettling development. The bond these women shared was maybe beginning to fray a bit around the edges. This disturbed him for reasons beyond the current moment of confrontation, mostly because it indicated Echo’s faith in their ability to help him with his sister wasn’t founded on anything much.

  Echo sighed and adopted a slightly more obsequious tone. “Dez…please take your feet off my boyfriend’s balls.”

  “Oh? So he’s your boyfriend again, is he?” Dez glanced at Lana. “Hey, who was that chick we were talking to last night? Black hair. Bangs. Pale skin. Very pretty. Said something about wanting to blow out the brains of her scumbag ex. You remember that? Who was that chick?”

  Lana shrugged and took a drink from a bottle of beer that was wet with little beads of condensation. “Maybe I recall something like that. But relationships are complicated. People change their minds about the people they’re banging all the time.”

  Dez nodded. “But it’s a hell of a leap to go from wanting to blow a motherfucker away to suddenly reconciling. Am I wrong?”

  Another shrug from Lana. “It’s like I said. These things are complicated.”

  Dez slid her feet out of Casey’s lap and sat up straight. “Whatever.” She cut a look at Echo. “Chill, bitch. It’s like you said, I’m just messing with him. You know that. Why so uptight?”

  Casey could see the tension drain from Echo’s features as she let out a breath. “I’m just tired. A lot of intense shit happened this afternoon. We need to talk about that thing I was telling you about.”

  “You mean about his sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dez nodded. “Right. We’ll get to that. But first things first.” She slugged Casey in the shoulder. “You’re not getting out of this.” There was a gun at the edge of the table. She picked it up and aimed it at his chest. “Now snort up or I’ll do what Echo was too softhearted and sentimental to do. You’ve got five seconds.”

  Casey’s aversion to drugs yielded to pragmatism. He bent to the table and snorted half the line Dez had cut for him with the credit card. A quick glance her way told him that wasn’t good enough, so he finished the line. “There. Could you please not point that at me? It’s making me nervous.”

  “One more line.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “One more.” She cocked the hammer on the gun for dramatic effect. “Or I put a bullet through your heart.”

  Casey sighed and made no effort to hide his frustration.

  But he did the second line.

  And just as he was finishing it, he heard a soft sound of suffering issuing from somewhere else in the house. “What was that?”

  Dez’s smile was all patently false innocence. “What was what?”

  The sound came again.

  Casey knew Dez wouldn’t give anything away—she was a world class bitch who enjoyed playing mind games far too much for that—so he shifted his focus to the other girls. Lana looked at him evenly when his gaze shifted in her direction. She took another swallow of beer and said nothing. Echo’s expression was slightly more troubled, but she also opted to remain silent for the moment.

  He pushed the chair back and got up from the table when he heard the sound a third time. Someone in another part of the house was whimpering in a way that suggested intense discomfort and/or pain. There was a familiar quality to the sound, one he’d heard before in hospitals and hospices. It was an expression of distress unique to the dying.

  Casey walked out of the kitchen and into the dusty living room, where he stopped for a moment and listened. The girls were close behind him. The next whimper was followed by a pitiful fit of muffled crying.

  There was a hallway on the opposite side of the living room. Casey directed a quick glance at Echo before starting in that direction. Her mouth was a tight line of tension. It was clear she wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of him locating the source of the cries. It wasn’t an expression of shame, not exactly, just apprehension.

  The girls followed him down the hallway until he stopped at a closed door on the left. The door had been decorated with markers of various bright colors. Written in large block letters were the words FUN ZONE!!! Surrounding the words were various crude renderings of people being executed via guillotine, hangman’s noose and a bullet to the head.

  Casey looked at Dez. “Your work, I guess.”

  “It was a team effort.”

  Lana said, “We were tripping balls that night.”

  Casey grimaced. “Lovely.”

  He opened the door and went inside.

  A bruised and bloodied young man sat bound to a chair. The girls had used a combination of duct tape and electrical cords to secure him firmly to it. His clothes were in filthy, blood-stained tatters. His shirt was so shredded it barely clung to his body. Through the many rents in the fabric, Casey could see countless raw and oozing wounds. Some looked infected, which suggested he had been held hostage a significant amount of time, weeks or longer. The stench arising from his soiled clothes supported this theory. Nails had been driven through his knees and through the tops of his bare feet.

  The man was awake as they entered the room. His eyes pleaded with Casey as he came closer and bent down to look at him more closely. There was something wrong with his tongue, something that made closing his mouth difficult and rendered speech impossible. It was hugely bloated and gray. Casey suspected a failed attempt at excision. The bloated wedge of infected flesh looked like a dead thing living inside his mouth. The splintered remains of his teeth made the sight even more stomach-churning. Someone had bashed them out with a hammer. There were bloody tooth fragments all over the floor in front of the chair.

  He turned away from the poor bastard in the chair. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on here? Why have you been torturing this guy?”

  Dez smiled. “Because it’s fun.” She looked at Echo, her expression expectant and domineering. Casey had a sudden insight. This chick was a b
ully. She had probably been pushing Echo around from day one. He wouldn’t have believed anyone could do that to her, but the truth was obvious. “Isn’t that right, Echo?”

  Echo looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

  Dez looked at Casey. “There you go. Anything else you want to know?”

  Casey didn’t have the first clue what to do about the guy in the chair. Dez still had the gun she had pointed at him in the kitchen. She wasn’t pointing it at him now, but that didn’t really matter. Even if she didn’t have the gun, it would still be the three of them against him. When it came down to it, he knew Echo would be on their side in any kind of struggle. There might be some dysfunction here, but they were a gang, a tightly knit unit. He could see from Echo’s expression that nothing about their captive’s condition shocked or disgusted her. They had done things like this many times. She had told him in a general way about the murders, but minus visual proof of what that meant there had been a kind of disconnect from the reality of it.

  That had changed.

  Again, though, pragmatism had to rule the day. This guy was fucking doomed. It sucked, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he took any kind of action other than simply accepting that, he would be fucking doomed too.

  Casey looked Dez in the eye and shook his head. “No. There’s nothing else I need to know.”

  “Good.”

  Dez pulled a slim object from a pocket of her tight denim cutoffs and tossed it to him. It landed on the hardwood floor with a clatter. He glanced down and saw a small folding knife at his feet. A spring-button on the side indicated it was a switchblade.

  He looked at Dez.

  She smiled. “Pick it up.”

  He did as he was told. What other choice did he have?

  “Wonderful. Now press the little button on the side and stick that blade in Micah’s neck.”

  Casey stared at Dez. He didn’t press the button. “What?”

  She raised the gun and pointed it at him. “Do it or you don’t leave this room alive.”